It’s my Birthday!

Well, my company’s birthday that is. It’s been a whole year since I officially launched Media Career Advice!

I’d been thinking about setting up a training company since 2016/2017 and completed my ‘Level 3 Train the Trainer’ qualification in 2017.  However work took over and I didn’t actively pursue my idea again until the start of 2020 (I swear I didn’t know Covid was coming!). 

At that point I decided that I wanted to put together a website and start putting together courses.  I also wanted to offer one to one career advice sessions as I know how difficult it can be to get into the industry and to progress through it, or to just get consistent jobs as a freelancer.  While recruiting crew for production companies I found it increasingly frustrating that just a few tweaks to a CV or a cover letter could have given that candidate a much stronger chance or seeing interviewees who had great CVs but weren’t able to convey their experience and skills in an interview.   I wanted to be able to help these freelancers on a larger scale and give them the support and confidence to reach their career goals.

So I decided to combine these both together through Media Career Advice and offer training and one to one career advice support.  Once I’d finished putting the website together (which ended up being a really complicated process), I officially launched with the aim of running my first ever course, Foreign Filming for Production Co-ordinators, in July and started to try and build up a social media/newsletter following to get my company out there.

I launched my second course, Production Management for Unscripted TV, in October.  ScreenSkills approached me to run my courses as bitesize versions and I started running these in December.  I also partnered with CULT Cymru in January this year to deliver courses to their union and non-union members.

Since I launched I’ve ran a total of 22 courses and trained 244 people.  I’ve supported 37 people on a one to one basis with their careers.  I’ve mentored 3 individuals over 6 months through BECTU Cymru’s Mentoring 4 Screen and Coleg y Cymoedd.  I’ve took part in webinars which a total of 130 people attended.  I also took part in my first virtual careers fair for the RTS which saw a total of 365 people visit my booth.   I’ve got 233 subscribers to my monthly newsletter and a staggering 510 followers across all of my social media which is absolutely amazing! 

I’ve been so overwhelmed by the growth and support of my business and I wouldn’t be where I am without all of you amazing individuals and of course ScreenSkills and CULT Cymru.  So from the bottom of my heart thanks to you all!

I’m really excited to be starting my second year with plenty more courses coming up.  I will also be launching my ‘Production Co-ordination for Unscripted TV’ course and my ‘Foreign Filming for Production Managers’ course.  I’m also looking to put together some talks/courses for new entrants to the industry, so do let me know what you’d like those to be.

Shorting I’ll be launching my first set of talks which I’m really excited about.  More to come on those soon! Plus I’ll be putting more blogs together on subjects close to my heart as well as useful tips for freelancers.

It’s been an incredibly exciting and rewarding journey so far and I’m really looking forward to expanding the courses I deliver as well as providing new content that will hopefully benefit you all.  Thanks for coming on the journey with me and thank you again for all of your support!